Of Aunte Becky.¹

Having heard the words of Boulevardier², the Swiss mercenary, Lady Jardiance clapped her hands slowly, as if she had heard the performance of a bad actor.

(But it is my experience that this sort of behavior is not expected of upright nobles at the theatre.)

‘How little you credit the wickedness of women, even while defending their purity, Monsieur Boulevardier! But I suppose since you’re not from the city, such provincial³ innocence must necessarily accompany you.’

Boulevardier frowned at her as he resumed his place.

‘Are you saying, Lady Jardiance, that some women deserve scorn if and when they transgress against the common trust⁴ of men?’

‘Yes, Monsieur Boulevardier, and to render the point a salient one, allow me to say that a woman who breaks her word to obtain some favor from the public is no better than the lecherous judges whose stories you have just told.’

‘By that token, Mademoiselle⁵, will you answer Monsieur Boulevardier’s stories with one of your own? Or will you allow another to make the well-warranted point you have just made?’ Lady Ouiser then said to her niece.

‘Dearest aunt—Aunt Ouiser, whom I love like a second mother!—I rise now not only to defend women against the folly that convinces them they must be unjust to others to obtain a reputation and honor, but to defend our sex from the supposition that we are not equally endowed with the sense to hold one another accountable in the first place.’

Lady Jardiance then glared at Boulevardier as she bowed to Lady Ouiser.

She began her tale.

Since we’re all feeling rather confessional, I guess I’ll start this by saying that this story happened to my friend about two years ago. She moved away shortly afterward, and both she and her poor father have not spoken to her mother, who is the subject of my tale.

Actually, scratch that. Auntie, I love you dearly. But since you’ve always told Arbonne and me that honesty is the best policy, it seems best to start with the real subject of this tale: Paul de la Motte, Lord of Charmin⁶.

Lady Ouiser’s smile faded.

‘I beg your pardon? Jardiance, my dear, how is your cousin’s betrothed⁷ related to the tale you’re about to tell?’

‘He’s not directly.’

Jardiance looked to Arbonne and then said:

‘Should we?’

Arbonne nodded silently, and then Jardiance spoke:

‘Aunt Ouiser, we wish to exchange our intended husbands immediately. We were hoping to tell you when we got to Lodi, but seeing as that’s nigh impossible for the next sixteen days⁸, it’s best to tell you now and avoid the pain of embarrassment in the restaurant we planned on supping⁹ at.’

‘Wait a minute,’ Master Xerox said. ‘I thought we were to hear about women who can’t keep their word to the government.’

‘Aunt Ouiser, you yourself said that Jardiance was better off with Paul since she prefers fat men and I prefer thin. And Sieur Polydent de la Pouffiasse is just the right kind of rail-thin for a girl like me,’ Arbonne said.

Lady Ouiser took an exasperated breath and said:

‘But girls—Here? Now?’

‘Yes, Auntie. I must have Paul. You know I love him—’ Jardiance began.

‘And Polydent has promised me a lifetime of cosmetics and extramarital bliss¹⁰, Auntie,’ Arbonne added.

‘Wait,’ Princess Calamondin said. ‘How much extramarital bliss?’

‘Cosmetics?’ Lady Ouiser said.

‘Paul said he cannot live without me. And in fact, had it not been for Aunt Becky, we would not be here. I will show you the letter he sent me before we left.’

‘And I will show you the Himmelsbrief¹¹ that Sieur de la Pouffiasse procured from the wise woman¹² of the Fontaine de Sainte-Poutine¹³ back home. She said it came scented with juncoes and golden lilies from the throne of St Christopher himself¹⁴,’ Arbonne said.

‘Everyone chill for a second. Let’s all take a deep breath,’ Figma said.

The shepherdess stepped to Jardiance and rested a hand on her back.

‘Who on earth is Aunt Becky?’ she said.

‘Rebecca of Fairlane, my aunt. Technically she’s my step-aunt¹⁵—my uncle’s second wife.’

‘And the first one?’

‘Vavaïenne de Mélézour, Countess of Ouioulououïâ¹⁶—the late Countess, I should say. A renowned cook, with a nose longer than a summer’s day. Her piquant nature¹⁷ and her sharp tongue were repaid by a jealous heaven with an early death and ill-fame¹⁸.’

‘So this Aunt Becky ruined your betrothal?’

‘Sort of. She was the one who arranged the betrothals for Arbonne and me. And for her daughter Mistée, too. But her friend, Félicité de l’Oufmannier, Comtesse de Pissaladière, got the names mixed up when it came time to submit them to Papa for approval.’

‘And your mother?’

‘Zaïde Frénais, Marchioness of Lalououalâ¹⁹—she abstained from approval if only because she knows Paul loves me more than he loves the stew of meat and earth-apples from the Indies called patata²⁰.’

Oura shook her head too many times to count.

‘Are people in your part of the world incapable of having a firm tongue? Like, at all?’

‘And this Monsieur Paul, Lady Jardiance? What of him?’ asked Persiflage.

Jardiance closed her eyes.

‘Oh Monsieur, if you only knew His Lordship. Three hundred and twenty-six pounds of the most beautiful masculine flesh ever devised. His girth is rivaled only by the greatness of his discretion, the breadth of his knowledge, and the very courtly airs that surround him. And unlike Henry VIII²¹, his legs are entirely free from ulcers.’

‘I should very much like to hear about this Hercules²² of Southern France—and of course, how your Aunt Becky ruined what sounds like the wedding event of the age,’ Persiflage said.

Jardiance looked to Arbonne once more.

‘I suppose you have no choice, dear cousin. Everyone’s on tenterhooks²³.’

She looked to a bemused Lady Ouiser and resumed her tale, as Arbonne passed the love-letter from Paul around. His coat of arms²⁴ was extravagant to behold: tierced per fess²⁵ argent, or and vert²⁶; in chief, a bear brun et or²⁷ with a pile of excrement brun, shaking the nuts from a chestnut tree brun et vert proper; in fess, a motte and bailey²⁸ argent; in base, three apples proper.

‘Is this Monsieur Paul in the cider trade²⁹, perhaps, Your Ladyship?’ asked Master Xerox.

I came to know of my Aunt Becky from a young age. But she did not like my father, nor did my father like her, as is the case with second marriages. But when I came to marriageable age, she warmed up to our family.

The name is strange, but I am told that is the way she preferred to be called in English. It is the new trend, apparently. Victoire, for example, is called ‘Vickie’, and Élisabeth is called ‘Sissie’, and so on. A few years ago I tried it out on my girlfriends, but the name just didn’t take—Jackie O. Can you believe how ridiculous that sounds?

Anyway. Aunt Becky had a daughter, Mistée de l’Ours³⁰, whose name, incidentally, has nothing to do with Paul’s domain at all. Paul’s domain, as you can plainly see from the letter Arbonne has just passed around, does indeed have a shitting bear problem. They lived not too far from where Paul lives now, which is how this all came about.

But I am already telling you too much too soon. What you should know is that Aunt Becky truly loved Mistée, and as soon as the girl was of suitable age, she said to my uncle, ‘We should try and enroll Mistée in school. I’d like for her to be an intelligent lass, and I believe a university education would be just the thing.’

‘I hope you’re not suggesting that Madame Becky wished to put her own daughter through the rigmarole³¹ of a university education,’ Master Xerox said.

‘What’s so rigmarole-y about it, Master?’

‘Back up a second, Jardiance—a shitting bear problem? Are the berries in Charmin imbued with some sort of stomachic property³²?’ Boulevardier then said.

‘I mean to say, Madame, that the idea of women going to the university, in a place full of awful young men on the threshold between the awkward and the unthinkable, is plainly repugnant.’

‘To you, perhaps,’ replied Jardiance, ‘but I had a similar education and came out just fine. Isn’t that right, Arbonne?’

Arbonne of Olay nodded and she went on.

Mistée was rather ambivalent about the prospect. That’s no slight on her. Different strokes for different folks, I suppose. But Mistée is properly the kind of girl for whom marriage is a better prospect. But Becky and my poor uncle—a cloth merchant and designer of unwearable fashions in Nîmes³³—thought it appropriate to approach Maître L’Oiseau, rector³⁴ at the University of Lune³⁵. It’s like an Oxford³⁶ for people who like the smell of manure.

They said: ‘We’d like Mistée here to study jewelry-making, tapestry, embroidery, needlepoint³⁷, poetry, music and dance. We’d also like for her to read and write, and perhaps to learn some sort of hard science, like mathematics.’ Mistée, for her part, was happy to do everything up to learning how to read and write—something about the Latin alphabet looking too ugly. But we told her: ‘You can just pay someone to print a book in a font you like.’

Maître L’Oiseau then said: ‘It can be done, and just between us, there is a reliable way to get your daughter into university. You see, the provost posts guards³⁸ at the University gates—presumably to stave off Lutherans³⁹—but there’s a side door, in the College of Business, that’s used when wealthy patrons need to hide from the tax constable⁴⁰. This is where we can grant your daughter access.’

But he said it would not be cheap—locksmiths!—and so they made a little arrangement among themselves, and my uncle gave this L’Oiseau an estate for himself⁴¹.

Its name, dear friends, is Asse-en-l’Air. It’s a former bakery in a great wood southwest of Carcassonne⁴². My uncle bought it for a pittance off a broke count and meant to use it as a garde-robe⁴³ for his winter cloaks, but it suited Maître L’Oiseau. Aunt Becky was pleased and then went to my mother and father and bragged about it. That was her first mistake.

‘And her second?’ Persiflage said.

‘Félicité de l’Oufmannier,’ Arbonne replied.

Félicité’s daughter, Geneviève, was of a similar disposition—too bright for the convent, too dim for the court—and, since Félicité and Aunt Becky were friends (through jam-making and basketry), she wished for her daughter to accompany Mistée at the university. So Aunt Becky brought her to L’Oiseau, too. Her family gave him several horses, some cloaks, a servant girl and a year’s supply of crème fraîche⁴⁴ at the local dairy, gratis.

Maître L’Oiseau, for his part, ‘fudged⁴⁵’ the paperwork by making the girls seem more talented and unique than usual. I think it may have actually involved fudge of some kind, as the thing called chocolate just arrived from the Indies⁴⁶ there not too long ago. Mistée was made to look like some sort of rowing heroine, and Geneviève was touched up as a kind of backup royal mistress who was also good at playing the psaltery⁴⁷ and painting funny versions of playing cards.

But the funny thing is L’Oiseau kept on asking for more money, more time, more influence, more things—in short, far too much to ask of two modest noble families. Then Aunt Becky came to us under the pretense of convoking a sewing bee⁴⁸—yet another red flag.

‘Oh God, not the sewing bee,’ Arbonne said. ‘I forgot about that, Jardiance. I guess you ought to tell them.’

‘But how I’d like not to!’ Jardiance replied, grunting.

Look. I’m not saying I don’t like sewing; it’s that it’s never been a thing I’ve enjoyed. Sure, fine: what girl doesn’t like to make pretty things? But Mistée kept on pricking her fingers like a dimwitted Snow White, Aunt Becky kept on telling me to get on a crash diet, Arbonne was scarcely lucid due to her time of the month and Félicité kept on talking about how noble marriage was the last refuge of a profligate dowager⁴⁹. She says to me: ‘After you lose weight, you should think about marrying or going to the University. It’s all the rage, and I should know: I went to Jesus and Mary Chain College in Cambridge.’

‘Jesus and Mary Chain?’ the Abbot of Costello then said.

Master Xerox reached for the book he was using as a seat-cushion again.

‘A well-known dependency⁵⁰, good Abbot,’ he said, licking his fingers and trying to find the page. ‘Keep going, Lady Jardiance. I will find the page shortly.’

‘I fail to see how Lord Paul is related to all of this,’ Boulevardier said.

Jardiance glared at him and kept going.

I had met Paul at Christmas the year before. He was dressed head to toe in white brocade satin⁵¹. His calves were deliciously thick and meaty under his stockings, and best of all tied up with two black-and-silver ribbons as if they were wrapped up for me.

He put me on his lap and said: ‘Dear girl, I’m in love with you. But your Aunt Becky and her busybody neighbor friend think I should marry your equally pretty cousin over there. What do you think?’

And friends, let me say here and now that I was never more sure of love at first sight than when Paul de la Motte asked me if I could spoon-feed him crème anglaise⁵² from the trout-shaped ramekin I held.

‘Meanwhile,’ Arbonne said, ‘there was Sieur Polydent, licking his chops at my shoulders in a new Venetian gown. He went up to me, wine goblet in hand, and said: “Now you must tell me who your couturier⁵³ is. Because I’ve got a little black number at home that’s not cutting it for me.” Same thing Jardiance felt, but in a different part of the body.’

‘Did she wreck your betrothal to hide her own tracks?’

‘Perhaps. But then again, Félicité can neither read nor write, so it could have been an honest mistake. Either way, she was already under the gun, as it were, because the constabulary and the regents⁵⁴ of the University of Lune were already suspecting that L’Oiseau was orchestrating some grand admissions scheme far beyond its expected quota: two hundred and forty-six girls were admitted that term alone, and all of them were top-level real tennis players⁵⁵, including Pandore de la Crasse, who nearly weighs as much as Paul does.’

‘Two hundred and forty-six girls?’ Lady Lunesta said.

‘—In the College of Business, mind you,’ Jardiance replied.

‘The Most Honorable Dependency of Our Lady Saint Mary of Jesus College, Cambridge,’ Master Xerox then said, reciting from his book. ‘Founded in 1389 to further the interests of the Honorable Order of the Goose, and predominantly consisting of interests tied to the then-burgeoning ribbon and tassel market in London.’

But it was too late. After Candlemas⁵⁶, the University placed a moratorium⁵⁷ on admissions for girls. Not like it mattered to Mistée! The girl rarely attended lectures at all. Aunt Becky didn’t care. She and Félicité lapped up all the notoriety it bought them. And Maître L’Oiseau—worse for him, because the tax constabulary found Asse-en-l’Air behind on its rents by some six seasons, and in danger of foreclosure⁵⁸.

Papa didn’t know what to do. By this time, Paul had mentioned his honorable intentions, but Félicité, like I told you earlier, had flubbed the names. Papa was eager to get it all out from under him and handed the arrangements to Aunt Becky to handle. And because Maître L’Oiseau knew clerks and scriveners⁵⁹ who could get the paperwork filed without the need for a bribe, he got it done quicker than we could object.

I wrote to Paul sometime thereafter asking that we stop our romance, but he didn’t want that, and neither did I. A few weeks before we left with Aunt Ouiser, he sent me a gold ring and said to pack up my bags as soon as we returned, because we would elope⁶⁰. Papa found the letter and the ring just as Arbonne’s parents found a similar request from Sieur Polydent.

‘We’d hoped the pilgrimage to Lodi would have been an excellent opportunity to make our case. But now, with an eighteen-day delay, a murder, and everyone acting as if somehow we’re all on trial, it seems right just to come out with it now.’

‘What about Aunt Becky?’ Persiflage then asked.

What about her? She’s still alive, and L’Oiseau too. But just a lot poorer.

The Regents were not happy, and neither were the authorities, who found two hundred and forty-six star athletes without good dowries utterly intolerable. Aunt Becky and my uncle were both apprehended alongside Félicité and her husband. L’Oiseau was put in the stocks⁶¹, his post was vacated and the University was cleaned and sanitized.

Fifteen thousand florins⁶², all told, passed through Aunt Becky’s hands, every one of them taken from her daughter’s own dowry⁶³. And you know what? Mistée’s still without a husband. Geneviève is too, and the last time we spoke, she said some Polish prince with a name far too obscene was making a very grand claim that one day, she’d be a mistress of a Sobieski in Warsaw⁶⁴.

So there you have it, folks. I love Paul de la Motte, even if I am ridiculed for it. But I would never leverage my wealth or happiness just to seek the attention of a man in some high office who probably wouldn’t work hard for me in the first place. Arbonne deserves a man who is just as much of a clotheshorse⁶⁵ as she is.

Ladies Arbonne and Jardiance then looked to Lady Ouiser, whose eyes were filled with tears. She rose and embraced them tightly.

‘I see you have not only come to pay homage⁶⁶ to the Holy Crafting Table, but to present your unfortunate cause to me. But my daughters, what may I do? I am nothing but a powerless old woman. My arms are impaled⁶⁷ with those of my late husband, your uncle the Duke, but I have no power to effect such a change! Only your parents may do that.’

‘Paul tells me that since you are higher in rank in the Court, you can select husbands for us regardless of what our parents think.’

‘And it’s not like they don’t know already,’ Arbonne added. ‘Papa is already asking me if Sieur Polydent and I plan on combining our fortunes to create the vast slipper empire he himself has dreamed of.’

Master Xerox closed the book and stroked his beard carefully.

‘I have determined at long last why Charmin has an excreting bear problem. Firstly, the issue is wrongly framed. It is not a problem. It is an unrealized agricultural opportunity. And secondly, the issue is partly folkloric and partly linguistic. Heraldically speaking, the apples in the base of the shield are references to the Hesperides⁶⁸. I am willing to elucidate the issue if you all are willing to lend ears to it.’

Lady Ouiser, her heart deeply touched, said: ‘You two would entrust me with your fates? For love, my dears? Think you both that I, least of all women, could do anything to prosecute your marriages⁶⁹ before your parents?’

‘We could think of no other woman save Our Lady and wise Pallas⁷⁰ who could,’ Lady Jardiance said.

At this, Lady Ouiser wept and pressed her nieces close to her. The scene was a most moving one, and I will say that I, too, shed numerous tears looking down on it. Not that anyone noticed me, of course—a narrator can only dispense his magic in certain ways. But know this, reader: I wept.

‘I shall write to your parents this very evening to seek their consent. And we must let Sieur de la Motte know, immediately, of course, that you wish to marry, dear Jardiance.’

‘He’s on his way to Lodi with the wedding party. We will marry in the Cathedral⁷¹ and return home as soon as this is all ended.’

And, having said this, the ladies returned to their places.

Then, Figma yawned and stretched.

‘Well. I think that about does it for seriously long stories. Six pages! Who’s next?’

‘I am,’ Sinema said.

‘Wait a minute! Neither Messer Cayenne⁷² nor the good Abbot have yet spoken. What sort of story-telling contest is this if certain folks aren’t allowed to speak?’ Boulevardier then said.

‘Do you want to be here for a nineteenth day or not, Ser Boulevardier?’ Sinema said, and she stepped forth to tell the third tale of the third day.